We woke at a normal time, but did not sleep long enough. We poured cereal before realizing there was no milk. My sister, Lydia, came home from work (she is a nurse and often works nights) as we went out to the car to get a change of clothes. Mike brought the clothes up and I left to find a grocery store to buy milk. Only a few yards from my turn I glanced at the gps to see what the next turn was. In the brief second I wasn't paying attention to the road, the car jumped the curb which shredded the tire. I pulled into a parking lot. All the parking was marked "reserved" so I went to the back of the lot. Turned out a tire place was a block away, so I drove the car on the rim to Mr. Tire.
After I parked, Mike met me at Mr. Tire in Lydia's car. The cashier looked up the information and showed us the available tires. We agreed on a tire and left to grab some groceries. At Safeway, we meandered around the store. Having missed breakfast, we loaded the cart with $50 of food. As we checked out I stepped on a squashed grape and got my shoe sticky. I took my shoes off and jogged to the back of the store to clean them, while the tire store left a message saying they did not have the model we selected in stock so they could not start installing yet. A more expensive tire was authorized. I ran to get more kombucha since we would have to wait longer.
(Derek had a runny nose for a couple days and my throat was starting to feel funny. The store had a nice ACV - turmeric - ginger - kombucha tonic, Kevita brand.)
I of course forgot to use the coupon. By then I did not feel like going back in. We stopped back at Target to get something for Lydia, then headed back to the tire place. As soon as they informed me the tire is installed, it turned out it also needs an alignment, another $100+, bringing the total well over $300. Total spent for a half gallon of milk, about $400. I hope I have learned the lesson about distracted driving!
Once the alignment was done we headed back home, had breakfast, and the kids returned from their walk with their aunt. The kids debated staying to swim but I had made plans to go to the MD Science Center in Baltimore with friends I met through a mutual friend on Facebook, a cousin of Tim, one of my friends from college and their family. Already running late, we finally packed everyone back in the car and headed north. The parking garage was easy to find. From there we walked a bit along the harbor in the glaring hot sun to the museum.
We had an excellent experience at the museum. In advance we had joined a local museum in order to get the reciprocal admission so we only had to pay for Fiona's admission. Once we found our friends (Cindi, Adam and their two little ones, Zoe and Keeva), we started going around to exhibits.
At the entrance, there was a weight attached to a rope that, when pulled and released, pushed a column of air through tubes vaulting a tennis ball high in the air. At the next exhibit, a seat was attached to a rope, which went up over a pulley and back so that you could raise yourself in the air. The kids were not quite strong enough to lift themselves but with help enjoyed going up and down. In the exhibit about the human body, there was a station where you would lay down flat on your back, and the assistant slowly raised a bed of spikes to lift you off the surface. Another station showed an imagine while you listened to normal noises, then asked you to notice what your biochemical reactions would be to a sudden alarming noise. My vision became unfocused and it made me want to look around to see what was going on. It was supposed to increase your heart rate too.
We then waited in line for a planetarium show. The show was about solar storms on the sun. The show included some really awesome supercomputer models visualizing how the solar flares happen and the role the electromagnetic fields play. Fiona had a hard time sitting still.
After the show we became a bit separated from each other. Some of the group went to the observatory on the roof and others either went to the bathroom or wandered around the dark outer space theme exhibit.
We explored a number of other exhibits. There were interactive activities about energy and power including a hand powered pump compared to an electric pump, and a hand powered generator providing energy to different uses. We watched a very interesting demonstration using liquid nitrogen and what happens when things get very cold, while the girls ate granola bars.
Eventually we made our way to an exhibit about various physics/engineering concepts: how gears work, a ping pong ball catapault with various angles, a tennis ball machine that you rotate the angle of a table to aim the bouncing balls, a paper airplane making activity and machine that launched the finished planes, and a bunch of hard foam building blocks. Derek had a cage constructed around him with blocks. We got it as tall as possible and then recorded a video of him breaking out of it. during the video, Fiona moved back towards him and the top of the tower narrowly missed her as it fell.
There was a demonstration about explosions (need ignition, air and fuel) where hydrogen filled balloons were exploded with a candle. Then we looked through the dinosaur exhibit, and wrangled the kids out the door back into the glaring sunlight. There was so much going on outside - a pirate ship, various food vendors, retail fronts, a granite ball held up by water jets in front if Ripley's Believe it or Not, street musicians and performers. The girls could not help but start dancing to the music as we moved through the crowds back to the garage.
We then drove to my sister Robin's apartment where we found many of my siblings and my parents - Becky, Robin, Josh, Russ and Ray all showed up. We enjoyed some tasty chili Robin made and corny cornbread from my mom. Then we spent the evening playing games and hanging out with my family.
After hanging out for a while, my extended family left Robin's, dinner was cleaned up, Josh and Robin took all the loaned chairs to their car and they left to spend the night at Josh's grandparents' house.
We set up sleeping places for all the kids in the small but homey apartment. Mike and I got to sleep in Josh and Robin's bed; there was a wall between the sleeping area and the rest of the apartment. The apartment is technically a studio. Derek slept on the couch, Fiona slept on the floor in front of the couch, and Elinor slept under the table.
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